


Reflections Still Look the Same to Me

by knune



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Christmas, F/M, M/M, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-12
Updated: 2011-12-12
Packaged: 2017-11-03 14:43:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/382457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/knune/pseuds/knune
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Not everyone loves Christmas. In fact, Leonard McCoy hates it but with good reason.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reflections Still Look the Same to Me

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [](http://space-wrapped.livejournal.com/profile)[**space_wrapped**](http://space-wrapped.livejournal.com/) prompt: _Bones hates the holidays and instead of some Christmas miracle occuring, Jim understands and they make their own memories_.
> 
> I finished this up last minute (seriously, very last minute) so I didn't get a chance to have this beta read. Please excuse any errors or mistakes (or plot holes or anything that just doesn't make sense...) I blame them on my sleep deprived brain.
> 
> Also, this is slightly AU. So uh, there. Sliiiiightly AU.

*

It’s the self-diagnosed insomnia that keeps Leonard up at night, his mind churning, his feet pacing back and forth across a black and white checkered linoleum floor, the soft lights of the Christmas tree blinding him from the living room.

His fingers itch to fix the ornaments, to straighten the tinsel, change the monstrosity of an angel hanging off the top to something less religious, less sentimental and old fashioned. There’s a hypo in his bedside table and he could be having a dreamless, peaceful night instead of listening to the squeak of his bare feet sliding across the flooring.

The sun is just starting to wake up, peak through the windows to wave good morning and force the well-rested from their beds. Leonard grunts and finally scratches his itch. He moves an ornament, just to the right, and it’s satisfying in a fucked up way.

Another bare of feet pad across the floor and stop somewhere behind him. “She’s too young to care about this, Len.”

“I just want it to be perfect.” He steps away from the tree and he sees a million things he could fix but decides to leave them for another restless night.

Joce sighs and when Leonard looks back at her, he sees the baby perched on her hip, sleeping with her chubby fists tucked around Jocelyn’s slender neck. “It will be, babe.” She says it like it’s a promise she knows she can’t keep.

*

Leonard’s on the roof, a strand of lights hanging precariously around his neck like a makeshift noose, threading down his body until it wraps around his waist and twists around his right leg like angry growing ivy. He’s been up here for hours and he’s almost done making his home look like Christmas vomit.

He yanks at the strand around his neck and feels a dozen tiny bulbs digging into his flesh like they’re trying to burrow their way in and light him up from the inside. There are a multitude of ways for him to die on this rooftop and he can’t help but think he’d make one hell of a corpse if something happened, all wrapped up and lit up like the northern star.

He weaves the strand around his body, trying to break away from the hold it has on him, when he hears a sweet and sassy _Len!_ from somewhere down below. Peering down below, he sees Jocelyn in the yard, bundled up in his heavy and far too large for her pea coat. Dwarfed by ridiculously long sleeves, she stands with her arms crossed, her legs pressed together like her bladder is full and about to burst.

“You’re going to freeze up there,” she yells up, her teeth chattering in an unnatural way. It’s never been this cold in Georgia, not in Leonard’s lifetime anyway, and he didn’t think about grabbing a coat before he climbed onto the roof earlier. He doesn’t really feel the brisk air blowing across his shoulders, the below freezing temperature. He doesn’t really feel anything.

Leonard waves his hand. “I’m fine. Go back inside before I have to treat you for frostbite.” Her feet are bare and he can see her toes digging into damp and dusted white dead grass.

Jocelyn giggles and he’s too far to see, but Leonard would bet she’s rolling her eyes down below. “You’d love it. Come inside for lunch before it gets moldy. Jo-Jo and I made you a sandwich.” She waves to him and it’s more of a weird flap with the sleeve of the coat, then runs back into the house.

Leonard stays on the roof and misses lunch. He’s pretty sure the sandwich didn’t mold over though.

*

Three hours later (and that’s just a guess of Leonard’s based solely on the position of the sun), he’s still on the roof. He’s no longer tangled in a strand of lights but he hasn’t made that much progress either. He’s not really sure where the time went and now he’s just sitting on the roof, the shingles hard and unforgiving on his bony frame beneath him.

Jocelyn appears on the grass below again and this time she’s wearing shoes, a coat that actually fits her, and has Joanna perched on her hip and a casserole dish in hand. “Len! Come down. I’m serious now. We’ve got to get your mom’s house.”

It sort of hits him then, like a punch to the face that he wasn’t expecting, wasn’t bracing himself for and now his cheek stings and begins to mottle over. It’s Christmas Eve and somewhere along the way, Leonard lost track of the days. He’s lost track of a lot of things lately.

He’s nowhere near finished decorating the house. Nothing is perfect right now and there isn’t any time left. The timer has sounded and there’s nothing but a neat row of zeros left on the clock.

His fingers claw at his denim covered legs and his nails dig into the fabric. He doesn’t want to go, doesn’t want to leave this roof if he’s honest. This year won’t be like every other year, where they sat around the table and laughed, ate until their stomachs were ready to rupture, opened gifts and played games and stayed up all hours of the night until Christmas Eve blurred into Christmas Day.

This year is Joanna’s first Christmas Eve. It’s also the first year Leonard’s father won’t be there. He’ll never be there again.

He swallows hard at the lump rapidly forming in this throat. He can’t do this. “I’ll follow behind. I just want to finish up here.”

Jocelyn is busy down below. She’s tucking Joanna into the back seat of the hovercar and all he can see right now is her ass as she leans into the open car door. “Don’t take too long.” She straightens up and turns back to him, leaning her arm against the top of the door. “And don’t forget to pick up Jo-Jo’s present.”

“I won’t forget.”

Slamming the car door shut, Jocelyn cranes her neck up and rests her hands on her hips. “I love you, okay? Please come tonight.”

“I will,” he promises and he’ll at least attempt to keep it. But he’s not sure if he can look at his mother without tearing up, sit at the head of the table without wanting to slam his fist through a wall.

Leonard watches as the hovercar rises into the air, quiet as a gust of wind, and zooms away. It takes him another two hours to set his feet on solid ground again.

*

Somewhere, in the recesses of his mind, Leonard knows that it’s snowing. Something wet is dusting his shoulders, sticking to his limp hair, stinging his face like a thousand tiny, freezing daggers and it has to be snow. It hasn’t snowed in Georgia for over a hundred years and now as Leonard stands in the middle of a road, blazing red and blue lights blinding him, it falls around him like some Christmas miracle when it’s anything but.

There’s a hand gripping his shoulder and he hardly processes it. He sees nothing but lights and the charred remains of a hovercar, hears nothing but yelling and screaming and crying, feels numb to his core. Someone moves in front of him, someone official wearing a uniform and a hat that makes him look like deputy dipstick. There are lips moving in front of him, blocking his line of sight and there’s a soft orange and yellow haze glowing around the face.

_Fire_ , his mind supplies but it doesn’t make sense. It’s snowing.

Leonard shrugs the hand off his shoulder and stumbles backwards. He sees his own car, sitting off to the side of the road in the distance, the driver’s side door open and the onboard computer system is dinging, reminding him that the _door is ajar_. In the back seat, Joanna’s Christmas present has her wet nose pressed against the partially fogged up window.

And then Leonard’s knees buckle, his body a heavy weight he can no longer bear. He lets the snow fall on his bowed head, lets a pair of hands pick him up and drag him away.

It isn’t until days later that he realizes that he was the one yelling and screaming and crying.

*

Time passes. The sun rises and sets. Life goes on.

Somewhere along the way, Leonard loses his job but maybe that happened before. He’s not really sure and whenever he tries to think about it, there’s nothing but a hole in his memory. It’s not worth remembering anyway.

He spends his days staring at the walls, a hideous lilac color Jocelyn picked out when she was going through a purple phase, and listening to Joanna’s Christmas present ( _Sunny_ , they were going to name her) bark in the background. He knows this is wrong. He knows this isn’t healthy but he can’t bring himself to give a shit.

He loses weight, loses his mind. He wastes his life in the bottom of a bottle and that’s okay, isn’t it? That’s okay.

*

A year passes and it’s Christmastime again. Leonard doesn’t decorate. He doesn’t put up the tree or hang lights off every branch and bush in the yard. This house is void of holiday cheer, the one black hole in a neighborhood full of comfort and joy.

He thinks it’s Christmas Eve or close to it but he can’t be sure when the days blend seamlessly into the nights and the days bleed into weeks and months like only seconds have gone by. But it feels like Christmas Eve, if the ache in his chest is anything to go by.

There’s a chime at the front door and with Sunny hot on his heels, pressing her cold, wet nose into his bare calves (it reminds him of snow), Leonard makes the mistake of answering it.

It’s a group of carolers, straight from a Charles Dickens novel, and Leonard thinks he’s had too much to drink, that this particular hallucination is getting out of hand. Their outfits are too bright, their smiles too white, and they look like the Stepford family from hell. Then they begin to sing, loud and in tune, with gusto and pride and every that makes Leonard’s insides churn and his head pound.

_Fa-la-la-la-la_

Leonard doesn’t deck any halls but he sure as fuck decks the baritone.

*

Leonard doesn’t join Starfleet on a dare or because of some recruiter who tells him that _Starfleet needs doctors like you_.

No, Leonard joins Starfleet because of an advertisement he sees on his vidscreen at four in the morning and because of the look in his mother’s eyes, the one that screams _please be okay_.

He joins for a new life, a chance to wipe the slate clean and start over. And that’s exactly what he gets out of it.

*

The academy is nothing like the recruitment advertisement. Leonard doesn’t spend his days stretched out on the grass in front of the library, a drink in one hand and a padd in the other. He doesn’t have a gaggle of new friends to sit with in the cafeteria and he certainly doesn’t have time to participate in clubs and activities.

It’s hard work, harder than he imagined and sometimes he longs for his dark house, for the year spent on his sofa, drowning in liquor. He spends his days in a classroom, his nights in the on-campus clinic, and he hardly has time to feed Sunny, let alone himself. Leonard has been tricked by false advertising.

The only acquaintance he’s made is a loud mouthed shit for brains kid named Jim Kirk. Jim is an enigma, all hard lines and soft edges, with eyes the color of the brightest, clearest sea, and rough, silver scars on his jaw that should have been fixed but never were. He’s loud and annoying, kind and thoughtful, a fucking genius that never studies, never has to power on his padd before an exam.

This acquaintance, this Jim Kirk, takes it upon himself to move into Leonard’s apartment two weeks after their first meeting. And this Jim Kirk, this imperfect kid who should want nothing to do with a waste of space like Leonard McCoy, wastes no time in sticking his hand down Leonard’s pants and taking what he wants with a smirk on his lips.

This snot-nosed brat is the first person Leonard sleeps with since Jocelyn. And while he doesn’t know it yet, Jim Kirk is also the only person he’ll sleep with for the rest of his days.

*

No matter how hard Leonard tries to ignore it, no matter how far he pushes it into the back of his mind, he can’t stop the seasons from changing, the leaves from dying, the grass withering away until it’s brown and ugly and useless. There comes a point where Leonard can’t pretend everything is okay, that it’s eighty degrees outside and the end of the year just doesn’t exist. Leonard can’t stop Christmas from coming.

There are lights everywhere, hanging from street posts and front doors, spiraling up the dead trunks of trees and strewn into the lifeless and empty branches. There are parties, parades, eggnog and alcohol flowing from every dorm room, every inch of the academy.

There is no escaping this, no turning his head the other way. Probably no hope of hiding away until January. Christmas is here.

*

When Leonard walks through the door, he finds Jim sprawled out on the floor with Sunny and a sad, pathetic sprig of a tree between his legs. The tree, and that word should be used lightly since it resembles a fern more than anything else, is limp, bare and there are more needles on the carpet than hanging from its branches. It’s turning brown, leaning severely to one side, and it can’t last much longer. This tree is on life support and it would be kinder to pull the plug than let it suffer like this.

Jim looks up, a candy cane hanging from his bottom lip like a crude fish hook. “Bones!” He gestures grandly to the tree in front of him, the tree that has one small red ball dangling from the one precocious branch that still is green and proud and lively.

Leonard’s stomach churns, a sick, nauseating feeling that leaves him reeling, his mind aching, and he wants nothing more than to crawl into bed and sleep until all of this goes away. He swallows against the sudden sour taste in his mouth and he can’t stop looking at Jim, the way his eyes are excited and shining brighter than the bulb on the tree.

He opens his mouth, to say something, anything that makes all of this okay but there aren’t any words. He can’t handle this.

So he toes off his shoes, leaves them by the door, and disappears into the bedroom, the door soundlessly sliding shut behind him. He barely makes it to the toilet before he vomits.

*

The tree is still there the next day and so is Jim and his stupid bright eyes. He’s perched on the arm of the sofa, tacking something to the wall, something green and probably poison that is going to kill them all.

“What are you doing?” Leonard asks but he doesn’t want to know, not really. He wants to grab his shoes, his bag and maybe a banana and get the hell out of here. He has a shift in twenty minutes and if there’s anything that makes him forget, to feel better, it’s fixing what is broken, curing the sick and aiding the ill. He asks because he’s supposed to, because that’s what boyfriends do, they _care_ about things.

Jim turns and there’s a grin on his face, large enough that his teeth could fall out and bounce onto the floor like some sort of deflated enamel basketball. “Come over here and I’ll show you.”

It isn’t until Leonard gets closer, when he gets a better look, that he finds out that the poisonous plant adoring the wall is mistletoe. _Mistletoe_. And he kind of loses it.

“No. Fuck it, no.” He backs away and he probably looks like a ridiculous, small, scared animal (and idly he wonders where Sunny is and if she’s been fed). His knees hit the coffee table and he stops, his heart beating like an out of control bass drum, and he’s worried about syncope, arrhythmia, myocardial infarction. “Take it down.”

“What? You don’t want to kiss me?” The grin has faded and Jim’s face is a mess of frown lines and sad eyes. It’s not a good look on him, one Leonard doesn’t ever want to see and he certainly shouldn’t be the one to put it there.

“Just take it down. Take it all down.” Leonard rounds the coffee table and he forgets his banana, forgets about his shoes and bolts for the door.

He spends his day barefoot and ignores every message from Jim.

*

Like he turned back time, pushed and twisted the hands of the clock until the days are rewinding, the minutes shedding off, the seasons changing back, Leonard comes home to find an apartment. Just an apartment.

There’s no tree, no mistletoe, no twinkling blue and red lights hanging from the doorframe of the bedroom. There’s no cutesy message of the fridge wishing him a _Very Merry Christmas_ or a stuffed penguin with a Santa hat sitting on the kitchen table.

But there is Jim, sitting on the sofa, Sunny curled up in his lap. He doesn’t look at Leonard, just runs his fingers through Sunny’s short, dark hair. “I guess I got a little carried away. I’m sorry.”

And this is what it boils down to, Leonard’s baggage, Leonard’s fuck-ups. This is his whole life and instead of using his mouth, talking like a normal, regular human being, he pushes and pushes until he can’t push anymore. He turns a blind eye, he yells and makes demands, he drinks and cries and obsesses, but he doesn’t _deal_ with anything. He doesn’t know how.

He sits on the coffee table, his knees bumping against Jim’s. “It’s not your fault.” Sunny lifts her head and licks at Leonard’s fingers, her tongue rough and wet and he can’t help but think that Joanna would have loved her.

“So you hate Christmas,” Jim says and it’s a statement, a matter of fact, and nothing more.

Leonard presses his palm against Sunny’s head and her fur is soft against his hand, warm and alive. He stares at her, keeps his eyes from Jim because he doesn’t know what to say. There’s something weighing heavily at the end of his tongue, an explanation, an excuse, but it’s stuck and it won’t slide off and vocalize into the world.

He owes it to Jim, owes everything to Jim, but he can’t quite find the words, the ones that say _my daddy died, my wife and child died, I’m a fuck up_. No, those words he can’t quite find, even if he knows them all by heart.

In the end, Leonard doesn’t have to say anything. Jim doesn’t ask and Leonard doesn’t tell. Jim just leans forward, brushes his lips against Leonard’s cheek and breathes out “okay”. Just like that. _Okay._

*

Christmas comes and this year, there’s no alcohol for Leonard to drown in, no conveniently loaded hypospray sitting innocently on his bedside table. There’s no way for him to avoid it, no way to sleep through it.

He wakes up to a weight on his chest, a heavy, suffocating, breathing weight, and his eyes pop open to see Sunny sitting on his chest, her tail thumping against his abdomen. She isn’t a puppy anymore, isn’t the small chocolate lab in the back of his car, her nose pressed against the cold, back window. Sunny has grown while Leonard spun his wheels and kept the parking brake on.

Leonard pushes at her, presses his hand into her torso until she tumbles off his chest and sprawls out onto the empty space beside him. And like nothing ever happened, she licks at his face and beats the mattress with her tail.

He rolls onto his side, away from the lab, and there’s Jim, hovering in the doorway. He’s wearing sweatpants that have seen better days, a hole in the thigh and one in the groin ( _easy access_ , he claims) and a t-shirt that has _Starfleet Medical_ printed across the chest. “Hey,” Leonard says, his voice thick with sleep, his tongue tripping over the letters.

Jim leans his head against the frame and smiles, soft and bright. “I ordered Chinese. I figure we could spend the day in bed, maybe watch a vid or something.”

“No Christmas?” Leonard sits up, leans back against his pillows and he thinks this may be better than drinking the day away.

“No Christmas. It’s just _Jim and Len Day_.” Jim sits on the edge of the bed, puts his palm against Leonard’s gruff and unshaven cheek.

Leonard leans in and kisses him, not caring that his mouth tastes like the bottom of a dumpster, that there’s crust in his eyes and he desperately needs a shower. He kisses Jim like he’s the gateway to the rest of his life, the clean slate he was looking for.

“Thank you,” Len whispers, pressing his lips against Jim’s temple, his forehead.

Jim smiles, the skin around his eyes crinkling, his eyes twinkling in the dim bedroom lighting. He slaps Leonard on his blanketed thigh and laughs. “And if you’re good, I’ll blow you later.”

Leonard laughs, leaning his head against Jim’s shoulder and he thinks that he can handle this. Finally, this is okay.

*

Leonard will always hate Christmas but he learns to love _Jim and Len Day_.

*


End file.
